Txoko space becoming Naked Lunch Pub & Grill

Txoko closed on New Year’s Eve, leaving the former Enrico’s space dark for the past eight days. On Friday, the same owners — Ryan Maxey and chef Ian Begg — will be resurrect the historic location as Naked Lunch Pub & Grill.

Naked Lunch's fried chicken sandwich. Photo: The Chronicle 2010

“With Txoko, we designed a restaurant that we would enjoy eating and we figured industry people would enjoy eating at,” says Ryan Maxey, partner at Txoko and its adjacent sandwich shop, Naked Lunch.

“It was us pushing us for something in the neighborhood that wasn’t willing to embrace it, for better or worse. Naked Lunch made sense. Naked Lunch works and the neighborhood has endorsed it for years.”

The new restaurant concept will be an extension of the sandwich shop that has been operating in the takeout slot next door for the last 3 1/2 years. The food will be ordered via counter service; no table service. On the menu will be the signature fried chicken sandwich and all the Naked Lunch offerings, which rotate daily, plus a few new items like a burger.

They’ll move some pool tables and televisions into the cavernous space, to create what Maxey calls a “more comfortable atmosphere.” Maxey will be behind the bar (Txoko bar star Jason Brown left last month to move to Chicago). He says there will be a bigger focus on local craft beers, plus Belgians, for which Maxey has a fondness.

Maxey adds: “I’m an old fashioned bartender. There won’t be a specialty cocktail list; we just want to make it a well oiled bar.”

“I think it’s meeting the neighborhood in the middle, meeting Broadway in the middle,” he says, citing the success of nearby 15 Romolo in getting a good local crowd. “So many businesses are dark [on Broadway], it’s not even that bad anymore. There’s nothing to come for, so let’s get something positive in.”